Barack Obama has admitted mishandling the bitter political debate around healthcare reform and other mistakes that have contributed to diving poll numbers. But in a television interview before his first state of the union address tomorrow, the president said he was more interested in delivering on promises than winning re-election.

"I'd rather be a really good one-term president than a mediocre two-term president," Obama told ABC news. "I don't want to look back on my time here and say to myself all I was interested in was nurturing my own popularity."

With his approval rating slumping below 50% and the Democrats still reeling from their defeat in last week's Massachusetts Senate election, Obama is under pressure to use his address to dispel the growing impression that he is detached from the concerns of ordinary Americans and unwilling to make a stand for what he believes in.

The White House has leaked the president's intent to propose a spending freeze aimed at restraining a growing budget deficit amid the perception that government spending is out of control and contributing to the slow economic recovery. But while Obama says he is committed to doing the right thing, his speech is expected to avoid politically contentious issues that he once supported, such as cap and trade legislation.

Obama said that failing to follow through on a commitment for transparency in negotiations over healthcare reform, including a promise that talks would be televised, undermined the credibility of the emerging legislation.

Public doubts over the cost and impact of the reforms were reinforced by a sense that the legislation was shaped by backroom deals with politicians who were holding the process hostage, such as Senator Bill Nelson who won a significant financial advantage for his state and members of Congress who were able to force anti-abortion clauses in to the legislation.

Obama has also been criticised for not fighting more for the government-run insurance option he said he favoured. "We had to make so many decisions quickly in a very difficult set of circumstances that after a while we started worrying more about getting the policy right than getting the process right," he said. "The healthcare debate as it unfolded legitimately raised concerns not just among my opponents, but also amongst supporters that we just don't know what's going on. And it's an ugly process and it looks like there are a bunch of backroom deals."

Polls show that doubts about healthcare reform, combined with a sense that the president was failing to pay sufficient attention to the economy when millions of people are still out of work, were leading factors in the defeat in Massachusetts. Obama acknowledged as much in saying that the setbacks suffered by politicians in Washington are "nothing compared to the setbacks of a guy who loses his job".

The White House said Obama will also use his speech to announce a plan to respond to a bioterrorism attack after a government commission warned today that the US had failed to prepare the vaccines and medicines required to deal with deadly bacteria or viruses. The commission said "we no longer have the luxury of a slow learning curve when we know al-Qaida is interested in bioweapons" and pointed to the government's failure to prepare adequate amounts of a vaccine to combat H1N1 or swine flu.

In his first state of the union address the US president responded to public anger by promising action on jobs, after what he acknowledged had been a difficult year. What was the reaction to the speech?